Randomness

The 1960s were a time for radical experimentation with randomness in the visual arts. Even though computers were an available tool to explore chance operations, they were used in a limited way because of problems of access to the machines and a distrust of technology within the arts. The 10 PRINT program is remarkable because it represents the time when these reasons for not using computers in the visual arts were disappearing; the C64 was relatively inexpensive and designed for home use and the image of the computer was changing from machines that support technocracies to learning and self-empowerment tools.

Before personal computers, however, calculating machines could only be found in universities and research labs and because of the cost and perceived use. They were typically used exclusively for serious work, not for creating aesthetic images. When artists did gain access to these machines it was typically through artists-in-residence programs at companies such as Bell Labs and IBM, and through infrastructure such as Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) based in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Art and Technology initiative in Los Angeles. In fact, many of the first aesthetic computer graphics were made not by artists, but by mathematicians and engineers who were curious about the potential for other uses for the machines at their labs.

Within the first years that computer images were made, random processes were explored thoroughly. The first two exhibitions of computer-generated graphics appeared in art galleries in 1965 and both shows included pieces that were created using random values. In New York, the works of A. Michael Noll and Bela Julesz, both researchers at Bell Labs, were exhibited at the Howard Wise gallery from 6-24 April under the title “Computer-Generated Pictures”. In Stuttgart, the works of Georg Nees and Frieder Nake were exhibited at the Wendelin Niedlich Gallery from 5 - 26 November under the title “Computer-Grafik Programme”

[Include footnote about Noll, random, and the patent office.]

Writing with perspective in 1970, Noll highlights randomness as an essential feature of the computer in relation to the arts, “The computer is a unique device for the arts since it can function solely as an obedient tool with vast capabilities for controlling complicated and involved processes, but than again, full exploitation of its unique talents for controlled randomness and detailed algorithms could result in an entirely new medium – a creative artistic medium.”